The editor as reporter.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Tilting at Windmills

Brady Kiesling represents a good side of the foreign service: the high quality of the people it attracts. A less happy side, how their abilities are often wasted on triviality, was told by Bill Keller, the new executive editor of The New York Times, in an article that appeared in the November 1979 issue of this magazine. A few years ago, I was selecting the best articles about government that had appeared in the Monthly. One I chose was Keller's foreign service piece. It will be posted on our Web site during this month.

Another article Keller wrote for the Monthly told a truth about Washington that still holds today. Titled "Lowest Common Denominator Lobbying" (May 1983), it describes...